Well the old adage "location, location, location" is definitely true. These days UK based circlemakers toil all night long weaving vast intricate formations only to have researchers sniff at their handiwork a'la "this modest 400ft formation consisting of over 200 circles...".

Not so for our Russian counterparts. They were out flattening some Barley in the Southern Russia village of Yuzhnoye near Stavropol last Thursday night [ 22nd June 2000 ] and bingo! - the very next day, their rather shabby looking creation was all over the Russian mainstream media. Vasily Belchenko deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council [ pictured right ] was immediately on site gushing about the origin of the formation "There is no doubt that it was not man-made... an unknown object definitely landed there."

Nearby villagers backed up his assumptions, alleging that they had seen a UFO landing in the field - "the landing was very quick and the take-off was immediate... it all happened in a few seconds."

The Russian TV news reports about the formation were speculating that the UFO had come to the field to take a sample of the soil due to a 20cm deep cylindrical hole with polished walls, found right in the centre of the large circle... [ see right ] then again, a more down to earth explanation for the hole could be that our Russian counterparts had decided to bang a pole into the ground from which to mark the circles radius!

The farmer is still wondering why aliens needed his earth and we're still wondering just how the Russian's would have reacted if one of the huge perfectly formed formations that regularly graces the fields of Wiltshire had appeared in one of their fields!

For further information you can read an online report about the formation [ assuming you can read Russian ] on the ORTV website and you can also view the footage from one of their news reports about the formation. There's also a report on BBC News Online.